286 CHAPTER 6. LANGUAGE PATTERNS
6.2.1 Back referral using
The simplest nominaliser is just the nominalising. This turns any clause
that precedes it into a back referral to something either previously men-
tioned, or previously established as topic somehow. Say we have the fol-
lowing sentence:
”Going to an art gallery.”We can nominalise this sentence into a back referral using by ap-
pending it to this sentence:
This has no direct translation on its own, but requires a bigger con-
text to operate in; on its own it can mean anything that can be approxi-
mated with ”the [going to the art gallery]”. Only when used in a bigger
sentence will this noun clause really make sense:
”Going to (the) art gallery (today) was fun.”Here, the noun phrase has been turned into a back referral to some-
thing that happened.
6.2.2 Abstract conceptualisation using
The noun is used to turn clauses into anabstractthought, rather than
the actual thing. For instance:
”(I) have not yet seriously considered whether or not to go to America
to study.”Here, the clause , ”to go to America to
study”, has been turned into an abstract idea, about which the comment ”I
have not yet really thought about it” is made.